Elina Lastro Niño's curiosity about honey bees dates back to her childhood in Bosnia, where her father kept bees for a time. After perhaps one bee sting too many, her father gave up his bees, and Niño's interest in honey bees waned — but not her fascination with insect biology.
Fast forward several years to Niño's time as a master's degree student in entomology at North Carolina State University, where she studied dung beetles. While looking for a research program in which to pursue a doctorate, she visited with N.C. State entomologist Christina Grozinger, whose lab was becoming known for its research on honey bees and other pollinators.
"I thought the work she was doing with bees was amazing, and that's when I really got hooked on bees," Niño said.
When Grozinger, now a Distinguished Professor of Entomology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, left for Penn State, Niño followed. There, she conducted research on honey bee queen reproductive health, earned her doctorate and served as a USDA-AFRI postdoctoral fellow. She parlayed that into a position as an apiculture researcher and extension specialist at the University of California, Davis, where she has worked since 2014.
While Penn State has developed a reputation as a leader in pollinator research, the experiences of Niño and a fellow entomology Ph.D. alumna, Holly Holt, illustrate another key contribution to pollinator health. Penn State is playing a critical role in training the next generation of scientists to address problems — such as parasitic mites, diseases and pesticide effects — that are likely to take longer to solve than the duration of a research grant or even an entomologist's entire career.